


Make a wish

by LenaLanders



Category: Rammstein
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Astronomy, Bullying, F/M, Gen, Quantum Mechanics, Rammstein - Freeform, Science, Young! Rammstein, nerdy, physic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:53:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23598676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LenaLanders/pseuds/LenaLanders
Summary: Fantasizing about idols can be dangerous, especially when it comes to quantum physics, mysterious experiments and time travel, and you have to find yourself in a new reality with fear of discovering that you have no idea how you got here. Fortunately, you have your partner in crime next to you.
Relationships: Paul Landers/Original Female Character(s), Richard Kruspe/Paul Landers, Till Lindemann/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 11





	Make a wish

I slept extremely uncomfortable. I woke up with a horrible pain in my lower back and knew I couldn't survive that day without painkillers. Again, I will have to deal with impudent people who will come and complain that their package has a product different from the one they ordered. Will people ever start to respect each other? Thank God that college classes are next week. Extracurricular studies are a blessing thing that unfortunately you have to pay for.

The phone started ringing. Alarm clock. At first, the silent whistling was getting louder and louder until the guitar sounds came along and Till started singing that he doesn't want to be an angel. I moved my finger blindly across the display. 6am. Time to get up!

The roof I saw after opening my eyes wasn't the roof I knew and seen every day in my house - it was strangely tall and had lots of splinters and small spots, like in some old apartment.

When I leaned into a sitting position, I was shocked and my heart hardly stopped. I was in a stranger's house. In a place completely unknown to me. A pack of thoughts flew through my head. Someone drugged me, kidnapped me and took me to an apartment where he would keep me until there was an organ donor. Or I'm gonna be taken to the east of Europe as a living commodity.

Where the hell is my family? Where are my friends? What about my studies and work? What about my plans for the future? If they cut out at least one organ, I won't be able to function or work where I intend. Fucking hell!

Just yesterday I was an ordinary student and an employee who was preparing a project for the university from research methods. Just yesterday I called my grandparents to ask how they were doing, just yesterday I was on a walk in the housing estate where I live.

Someone suddenly shook my shoulder and I swung to dethrone my attacker.

"Easy! It's just me!" A person shouted.

I couldn't believe my eyes. As far as I know, I had no glaucoma, cataracts or blindness. I'm not schizophrenic either, and I was conscious, completely awake from sleep, but the things I saw couldn't be real.

"What are you doing in my house?" I asked, and Nebel moved a little away from me, looking at me carefully.

"You're not at home." She said bitterly, and I hit my forehead. She was right. I wasn't at home. I was in a different place. And I was wearing embarrassing dog-image pajamas. Fortunately, I didn't wake up naked because I'd die of shame.

"Be careful. Now, I'm gonna ask you the most standard question that appears in all the books and movies. Where am I and what am I doing here?" I asked. That's impossible! I went to bed in my own house tonight.

Nebel stood next to the bed where I woke up and looked at me for research.

"I don't know how that's possible, but we're here together."

"Here, you mean where?"

She pulled the phone out of the pocket of her moro pants and moved her finger across the display and then gave me the phone so I could see it for myself. The screen showed the time, date and place. 11th of april, BERLIN. I felt dizzy and I knew one thing. I want to go home. I want to go to my job again, do my job and see my coworkers. Either I'm a victim of some powerful drug or... That's enough.

"You're kidding me." I said.

Nebel shook her head.

"I checked our exact location. We're in the Helmholtzkiez district in Berlin. It looks like an old tenementhouse. You better remember what you were doing last night." She explained, then she took the phone and left the room.

I was scared. Is some armed man gonna come in? Will the police come in and consider us illegal immigrants? I was starting to think. I was stunned by what I saw, but I knew I had to focus. I remembered the day before. I cleaned up in the closet, then I drank some beers and fell dead around midnight. But I didn't drink enough to get a headache or hangover.

"How did I find myself hundreds of miles from home in less than six hours? They packed me in a package and sent me by airmail? Because otherwise I can't explain it. Did you look, do you have any marks on your body?" Even in such a terrible situation, I was trying to think logically and spread this sick situation to the first things. There had to be an explanation somewhere, and I had to find it.

Nebel shook her head again, then went up to the big mirror in the corner of the room and picked up her T-shirt, looking at her body from all sides.

"Kidnapping for organs I rather reject. I have no stitches or cuts. No bruises or scratches."

I took the opportunity to discreetly check my body and was amazed to discover that I also look as I remembered it when I took a shower yesterday.

I dug out the sheets and looked around the room carefully. It looked very neat. White furniture, some little grey carpet, a mirror, long curtains reaching down to the floor, parquet flooring, and windows open to the wall, through which you could hear cars passing by and people rushing along the pavement.

I looked carefully outside through the window. The street looked ordinary. People walking with dogs, or almost running to the bus that stopped a bit further. Everything was normal for the city. The weather was warm and pleasant, the sky was blue with a few clouds. Nothing unusual.

Having made sure that we were alone, I looked around the apartment again. It was not big, it had one bedroom with two beds, a small kitchen combined with a living room and a bathroom. The door had no signs of burglary, no signs of fight, it was surprisingly clean everywhere, and my things were in the closet. In the bathroom, my cosmetics. My lipsticks and powders. There was too much of that.

When I left, Nebel was sitting on the couch in the living room and she kept looking at me.

"I'm gonna make some coffee, and you need to take a bath. Don't get upset, I'm sure there's some way to explain it." She said with a little smile.

Half an hour later, I tried to do make up to cover up effects of my yesterday drinking but I wasn't doing well because I couldn't concentrate. In next twenty minutes I found out that like me, Nebel doesn't know how she got into this apartment, but she has all her stuff with her, including her computer, sketches and all her personal stuff, all of it. Strange!

After drinking coffee and smoking half a pack of cigarettes, we started to wonder about the sense of the whole situation.

"Maybe this is some kind of experiment?" I was against conspiracy theories on a daily basis, and I didn't believe in any nonsense about Area 51, alien landings and clinical deaths, but I had to admit with pain in my soul that something happened to me that people usually call a warmhole. I just found myself in a completely different place and didn't remember how it could have happened. Is that even possible?

"Experiment?" Nebel put her coffee on the table and reached for another cigarette, which met with my critical eye. "What? I'm an adult, I can do whatever I want to." Normally, I'd probably take that cigarette away from her and give her a report about the harmfulness of tar and nicotine, but the circumstances required smoking. Just... So I took another one, too.

Nebel tried to explain to me the meaning of the existence of the universe, invoking all the theories of quantum physics that she knew, and I pretended to understand it. As a graduate in social sciences and a skeptic in everyday life, I was guided by an iron logic that all phenomena, or at least most of them, can be explained by science. But this situation overwhelmed me. I also knew that science was still evolving and that there were many things left to discover. So I asked if it was possible for us to fall into some kind of space-time hole and travel hundreds of kilometres to a completely different place.

"Everything we see in the sky is a thing of the past, because light moves very slowly. When we look at the Sun, we see its image of 8 minutes ago, the Moon 1 second ago, distant stars decades ago, and neighbouring galaxies millions of years ago. Although it seems that the speed at which light travels is really enormous, on the scale of the Universe it is safe to say that light simply drags in, because light travels at a speed of 300 thousand kilometres per second. The distance from us to our daily star is almost 150 million kilometers, so the light needs 8 minutes to travel this road. The effect of this is that if the Sun suddenly goes out, we would only see it after 8 minutes, or 480 seconds. With distant galaxies, their image is even older. For example, Andromeda, which we will see in the sky, was 2.5 million years ago. The farthest galaxy observed by the Hubble Space Telescope looked like this 13 billion years ago. If we were more than 4.5 billion light years from here, we could observe how our planet was formed at its beginning."

I've heard many times that the stars we see in the sky might as well not exist anymore, and what Nebel said was the same as what I read on the Internet when I was looking for information to feed myself on as long as I didn't do a project or a class outline. Instead, I read about the unexplained secrets of the universe.

The theory might have been right, but it would have meant in practice that we moved to another galaxy where there is an earth and a world similar to ours. It could not have been possible for us to travel in space.

Newton described the movement of bodies under influence forces. In this description, time was an integral part of the mathematical description because, as we know, any change, including movement, requires time, Newton considered time to be an absolute quantity, existing outside and independent of space. All events took place in space. To this day many of us still have this view: we consider time to flow in one direction at a constant speed. Some kind of cosmic clock measures seconds, minutes and hours. Whether we feel time flowing or not. We have no influence on the flow of time; we cannot accelerate or slow it down.

"Einstein has proven that the theory of absolute time does not exist. Have you read Hawking's posthumous considerations? The issue closely related to time travel is the ability to move quickly from one place to another. It would take infinite rockets to accelerate a spaceship above the speed of light. So the only way to get from one side of the Galaxy to the other in a reasonable time seems to be through a space-time tunnel formed by a very strong distortion of space-time, which, by connecting the opposite ends of the Galaxy, would be a shortcut to travel back and forth while our friends are still alive. Such space-time tunnels are quite seriously considered to be within the reach of future civilization. It may even be possible to travel back in time using a single wormhole, provided the two ends of the wormhole move in relation to each other..."

"Please, stop. Enough." I've interrupted this with a firm waving of my hand. It was too much. My head almost exploded out of excess information. I started to get dizzy. Another cigarette.

"Let's put aside the theories about space-time tunnels and black holes. The fact is, we're both here in a strange house..."

"Which apparently belongs to us, or at least we rent it." Nebel said.

I was interested in her words.

"How do you know?" I asked her.

"There was a note with the bank's name, login and password stuck to my computer. When I logged in to my account, it showed a transfer of 450 euros was sent last month. I guess that's..."

"Rent. So this apartment is rented. Any evidence that it's ours?"

"While you were sleeping, I went to take a look around. I found a letter from the energy company in the mailbox. Our names are here." Nebel replied. So we're in an apartment that we theoretically rent for quite a decent sum?

"Moreover…" She continued "It turns out that we both study at one of Berlin's universities of applied sciences. The emailbox was open. I found messages from several lecturers, and there are payouts in the bank account for the past months. It looks like you're working as a cafeteria manager, and I'm writing scientific articles for a local newspaper under the supervision of my university promoter. And I get paid for it! It’s amazing. Like… the better life, you know?" She said with a huge smile in her pretty face.

"You’re talking like Kruspe, _YOU KNOW_?" I replied, and Nebel laughed. "It's not funny. We need to find out what happened to us and how we can get back to what happened yesterday." I tried to sound confident, but I was getting more and more doubtful about the clarity of my mind. It was like I was in some very realistic dream. I knew that it was impossible, that this couldn't happen, but it was all true. I remembered all the stories of people who thought they had been hijacked by the UFO, or planes that disappeared from the radar and then appeared with a delay of a few minutes, while the crew did not notice anything suspicious and had no idea that they had disappeared somewhere in space-time.

Everything was wrong. If anyone could have heard the giggle of a force majeure, they would have found it to be a giggle that was malicious.

"It's a joke. Probably thousands of people are watching us now on their TVs and computers, betting on what the next step we'll take. What a shame. You think they have cameras in the shower too?" Embarrassed by this situation, I was completely losing touch with reality, I was talking nonsense.

I went into the kitchen and looked through the cabinets, then the fridge. Everything was full of food. It looked like some luxury hotel with an all-inclusive option. But maybe I could stay here? Then it occurred to me to try to call the house, tell them where I was, to get someone to come get me. I was just dialing the number when Nebel showed up behind my back.

"It doesn't make sense. I tried too. There is no such number."

I looked at her. _What the hell do you mean, there's no number like that? You mean my family doesn't exist? And our friends?_

"I've looked online for people I know, but there's nobody there. They disappeared from social accounts. That's weird." She said.

"Let's turn on the TV, maybe there'll be some news." I said. What a surprise when it turned out there was no pandemic and life was running on a normal course as I remembered it in early March.

"I wonder if Chernobyl is still burning. A few days ago someone set fire to the forest in Zona. I have to check it out." As a lover of interesting expeditions and forbidden areas, Chernobyl was of strategic importance to me. I've been planning a trip there for a long time and all the information about the activities of vandals or arsonists in the area has been a source of concern for me. I have put out the slogans on google, but I have not found anything like that. Initially, I naively thought that the fire was simply extinguished, but a moment later I shouted my eyes out, because the latest information showed that the power plant was still in operation and was just waiting to be expanded. I swallowed my saliva, wondering if Nebel should hit me in the face. Just in case, and maybe I'll wake up?

"We haven't moved in time. I guess we're really in some kind of alternative reality. The Chernobyl power plant is still in operation. There was no explosion in 1986."

Nebel looked at me in disbelief.

"What are you saying? It's impossible. Everyone knows there's been an explosion of steam, which damaged the roof by shutting off the security and removing the rods from the core..."

"China is not communist. No commune has ever existed! There was no World War II, Stalin was never born, and the Berlin Wall didn't fall because it wasn't built." I took the opportunity to check some important information for me and it turned out that we found ourselves in a completely different world from the one we knew.

Nebeel seemed unhappy. To be honest, she had a rather strange face, as if she was about to faint. Strangely enough, because a few minutes before she looked pretty happy with the situation and a lot of money in our joint account.

"There was no Berlin Wall?" She repeated, and her eyes grew even bigger. At first I didn't pay much attention to the importance of her question.

"This is some other galaxy. A different planet that looks similar to ours, but the course of history has changed here. Is that even possible?" I felt I was weak, and that I was about to be unconscious.

I started to wonder what the fall of the Berlin Wall has to do with our current situation. I knew one thing - we have jobs and money, we know what we're doing in this alternative life, we can't get in touch with anyone we know, and it seems that we've found ourselves in a better world. We have nothing left but to adapt to the situation and observe the reality around us closely. Maybe then we will discover how we found ourselves here and how we can return to our previous lives?

In the kitchen there was a large corkboard hanging on one of the walls, and a lot of written notes on it. On one of them I saw a written timetable at the university where we were supposedly studying. I ripped it off and took it to the living room.

"Nebel, look. We should get going. You have a lecture in quantum physics in an hour, and I have a neuropsychiatric lab." I said, showing her the card.

She looked at it for a while, and then she smoked one more cigarette.

Another one?

"It's all some kind of divine punishment." She said. I didn't really understand her words.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"It's you." I was fired by an accusation that made me stunned.

"Why? Because I had a few beers?! You know how hard I've been working lately!"

"You wrote _Forgive me father_. I guess Till read it and put a spell on us."

"You don't really believe what you say."

"I don't see any other explanation."

"You're telling me they read all the fanfictions on the Internet and put a curse on us?"

"Maybe they didn't like it? Richard was scared that somebody discovered how his feelings for Paul broke out during the 2019 tour, you made them monks and they probably got angry."

I was thinking. I've heard about cases of lawsuits, but the transfer to another dimension is not yet. It sounded so incredible that it couldn't be true. There was no scientific evidence for it.

"We're starting to talk nonsense. Anyway, Kruspe said he accept fanfiction, so he can kiss my ass. He won't do anything to me. Come on, we've got to make it to the tram." At that point I realized I was in a completely strange place, but for some unknown reason I knew where to go and how to get there. I felt as if I had regained my memory after an accident.

A moment later, I was standing at the exit door with the keys in the lock and waiting for Nebel to pack notes in her backpack. I put on my favourite black combat pants, black heavy boots and olive jacket. She was wearing camo trousers, high spiked boots and Rammstein shirt.

"You didn't eat breakfast." She drew my attention by tying up shoelaces.

"I'll eat something in college."

When Nebel went out in the hallway, I was closing the door. I turned around and she was staring at her phone.

"Strange." She said after a while.

"What?"

"Till suspended the account at the instagram. I can't find him."

I rolled my eyes over.

"He probably pressed something and accidentally deactivated it. Remember when Flake said there was no contact at all with Till, so they bought him a phone he wasn't answering anyway? He's that kind of man. Come on. We’re gonna be late."

Every step I took, there was more and more information in my head about Berlin, the university I went to, the deadlines and things I was supposed to do. It was the strangest feeling I knew. Walking on the sidewalk, passing people, I was hoping to wake up in my house and find out that all what happened to me is only a dream. Oh God, help me!


End file.
